Big Scam in Recruitment of Postmen Unearthed in Maharashtra

A big scam in recruitment for over 2,400 vacancies has been recently unearthed in Maharashtra by the vigilance department of the Department of Posts. In this regard, Manipal Technologies Ltd. (MTL), which clinched a bid to carry out the recruitment process for postmen, mail guards and other staffers in the postal department in 2015, has come under fire.

The Mumbai Police has registered an FIR against MTL in August this year, on the basis of a complaint by an assistant post master general. In his complaint he named P V Mallya amongst other significant people of MTL. Labelled as a mega scam, Mallya was refused a pre-arrest bail by Justice AM Badar of the Bombay high Court on November 3.

Badar said, “The case in hand appears to be a case of a big scam in recruitment in the department of posts… Selection to public employment has to be a fair and impartial process, based on merit of eligible candidates… This job was entrusted by DoP with utmost trust on the company… Prima facie, it is seen that, the company has breached the trust reposed by it and had shown nepotism and partiality in selecting candidates for obvious reasons.”

As per The Economic Offences Wing (EOW), the selection process had been annulled in Maharashtra. So far, no arrest has been made in this regard. Police is carrying out the interrogation process by questioning the company’s project managers, who were in charge for executing the recruitment process. The exam was conducted on March 2015 to fill in 1,680 posts of postmen, 21 mail guards and 733 multitask servants (MTS), while the results were announced on March 2016.

In the discrepancy first came into light, when the chief postmaster general ordered a vigilance enquiry on the compliant of an Amravati postmaster last April. In his complaint, it was stated that a postman selected through the recruitment process was a different person as per the photograph of a candidate on his online application form.

As per the vigilance report, 25 of the 194 postmen, who were posted in Maharashtra scored high in Marathi, even though they did not know the language. More than 70 candidates were found with similar email addresses.

Another surprising fact was that, few of the selected candidate did not even appear for the exam, while others did not even sign the paper. Apart from that, these candidate’s online signatures to the one on their answer papers were completely different. And, several candidates had identical addresses and phone numbers, as per the vigilance report.

According to the FIR lodged by the police, the qualifying candidates from states other than Maharashtra, including Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar, had residential addresses from a same area.